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EJToday: Top Headlines

EJToday is SEJ's selection of new and outstanding stories on environmental topics in print and on the air, updated every weekday. SEJ also offers a free e-mailed digest of the day's EJToday postings, called SEJ-beat. SEJ members are subscribed automatically, but may opt out here. Non-members may subscribe here. EJToday is also available via RSS feed. Please see Editorial Guidelines for EJToday content.

"Design problems with a blowout prevention system contributed to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, and the same equipment is still commonly used in drilling four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, according to a report issued by the federal Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board."

"A federal working group released a report Friday that details how the government can improve chemical plant safety and security, more than a year after the deadly explosion at a West, Texas, fertilizer plant."

"Even after the twin domes along I-5 are gone and the San Onofre nuclear plant is mostly a memory, fuel rods hot with radioactivity will remain behind in rows of tomb-like casks – perhaps for decades."

"WASHINGTON — If the Keystone XL pipeline is not built — and more oil from the Canadian oil sands is moved by rail — there could be hundreds more deaths and thousands more injuries than expected over the course of a decade, according to an updated State Department analysis of the contested project that was released Friday."

"In what seems to be a reprise of four years ago, hundreds of thousands of dollars are pouring into the race for Pennsylvania governor from company executives with ties to the state's burgeoning natural gas industry."

"A remote wetland near Itasca State Park, already undercut by three crude oil pipelines, is one of several fragile, isolated habitats along the proposed path of the 610-mile Sandpiper crude oil pipeline across northern Minnesota."

"In a stretch of marsh along the Altamaha River near Darien on Thursday, with 18-wheelers barreling by on nearby Interstate 95, researchers wove their way through a maze of narrow boardwalks to tend their new, long-term field experiment."

"Federal safety regulators warned on Thursday that another disastrous offshore oil well blowout could happen despite regulatory improvements in the four years since a BP well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and dumped millions of gallons of oil into the sea."

"Akif Eskalen steps through the dense, damp leaves in a wooded neighborhood, scrutinizing the branches around him. He's looking for evidence of an attack: tiny wounds piercing the bark and sap dried around them like bloodstains."

"It’s called chikungunya virus, and it’s already here in the United States, with 28 cases brought into parts of the country by travelers from 17 countries, mainly in the Caribbean, where more than 103,000 people have been afflicted by the debilitating virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday."

"The Sierra Nevada is rising. Drought-stricken farmers in the Central Valley are pumping more and more water from the valley's huge aquifer beneath them, and the drainage is triggering unexpected earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, scientists have discovered."